Zoom H2

Pros: Cheap, high-quality recordings

Cons: Determining where 'Front' is

Summary: I'm not sure who the elitist was that reviewed this product, but I have seldom seen a more biased review. Cheap and flimsy may have some meaning to somebody used to carrying a 3 lb field DAT recorder up Mt Everest, but how one perceives something by touch has nothing to do with any quality the device might have. If you want to comment on durability, do some durability test. Drop the item down a couple flights of stairs or just stomp on it. This kind of criticism is just too elitist to even comment further on.

As to audio quality... the microphones are not going to replace your high quality studio mics, but they do a good job. Noise specs are decent and the frequency respo0nse is well above average for a small condenser. The internal A/D-D/A components are exceptionally good. Feeding the little box line signals (and thus circumventing the distortions of the microphones) demonstrates a very high degree of accuracy in the most important link in any digital recording chain.

The fact that this little device can produce discrete 4-channel surround recording, and that the user base has grown to an almost cult following which has produced several free programs that will convert the 4 .wav files produced by the box in its surround mode, far outweigh any of the elitist criticisms of the original review.

In fact, the only thing I can really find wrong with the unit is the fact that the 'front' and 'rear' microphones are image-centric not user-centric. This means that in a close icing situation, the operator has to get between the recorder and the recordee to set up the box.